CONTENTS

IntroductionI. Some critical
comments
on
three leading paradigms
of information science II. From the
cognitive turn to the pragmatic
turn III. Information
science as
hermeneutic-rhetorical
discipline

Notes References

Abstract

Three
main epistemological paradigms of information science, namely the
representation
paradigm, the source-channel-receiver paradigm, and the Platonistic
paradigm,
are criticized. Taking into consideration some basic insights from
hermeneutics
(Heidegger, Gadamer) and analytic philosophy (Wittgenstein) a pragmatic
foundation of information science is suggested. Information means the
possibility
of sharing thematically a common world within specific forms of life.
It
thus becomes a rhetorical category. Information science is conceived as
a hermeneutic-rhetorical discipline that includes a
formal-methodological
as well as a cultural-historical perspective.

INTRODUCTION

Some
thirteen
years ago I made an investigation of the etymological roots of the term
information [Capurro 1978]. I (re-)discovered that key
theories
of Greek ontology and epistemology based on the concepts of typos,
idéa
and morphé were at the origin of the Latin term informatio.
These connotations were maintained throughout the Middle Ages but
disappeared
as scholastic ontology was superseded by modern science. Since
approximately
the 16th century we find the term information in ordinary
French,
English, Spanish and Italian in the sense we use it today: 'to
instruct,
to furnish with knowledge', whereas the ontological meaning of 'giving
form to something' became more and more obsolete. Paradoxically, the
epistemological
meaning was the basis of the formalization by Shannon and Weaver, who
explicitly
disregarded the semantic and pragmatic connotations. Information
seemed to lose its connection to the human world, and came to be
applied,
as a more or less adequate metaphor, to every kind of process through
which
something is being changed or in-formed. Through the mediation
of
cybernetics and computer science an inflationary infiltration of this
term
into many sciences (e.g. physics, biology, psychology, sociology) took
place. The result has been a chaotic discussion between two
extremes:
anthropomorphism and reductionism (1).

The
rise of information science led to a further explosion of this chaos.
Schrader
[1986, p. 179] counted some 134 notions of information in our field! At
the same time he observed that, on the one hand, the content of our
domain
was taken to be defined by the specification of the term information,
but
that, on the other, there was almost no reference to the negative form misinformation
and its derivatives: "lies, propaganda,
misrepresentation,
gossip, delusion, hallucination, illusion, mistake, concealment,
distortion,
embellishment, innuendo, deception." This leads to a "naïve model
of 'information man', which sometimes takes the form of decision-making
man or uncertainty man." (ibid.) Nevertheless, one thing seems to be
clear:
the notion of information in our field is explicitly referred and
restricted
to the human sphere. This means a(n) (implicit) rejection of
information
science in the sense of a super-science whose object is information at
all levels of reality. Such a science, without a material of
its
own, would be similar to a general techné, a science
of
sciences, as attributed to the Sophists by Plato in his Charmides
[Capurro, 1991].

When
we are looking for the foundations of a science, we cannot avoid
reflecting
on its main concepts. In the case of information science the main
concept
is not information but − man
(= man and woman). If we take a look into
some leading paradigms in our field, we observe certain ontological
presuppositions
having their roots in Greek as well as in Modern Philosophy. With the
rise
of philosophical Hermeneutics and Analytical Philosophy we have gained
new paths of thinking which are, I believe, relevant to the foundations
of information science.

In
this paper I will first briefly describe three main epistemological
paradigms,
which are based on a substantialist view of something called information
as well as on the modern distinction between subject and object
[Capurro,
1986]. From these I will pass to what I call the cognitive
turn.
This view abandons the idea of information as a kind of substance
outside
of the mind und looks for the phenomenon of human cognition as a
necessary
condition for the determination of what can be called information,
but fails to consider the pragmatic dimension of human existence. I
will
argue in favor of a complementary pragmatic turn by claiming
that
information is a fundamental dimension of human existence. The question
'what is information?' asks for the substantial characteristics of
something.
But information, taken as a dimension of human existence, is nothing
substantial.
Instead of asking 'what is information?' we should ask 'what is
information
(science) for?' The change over to the second question means a change
of
perspective which takes as a starting point the cognitive turn
but
goes beyond it in search of a pragmatic and rhetorical
perspective.

I.
SOME CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THREE LEADING PARADIGMS OF INFORMATION
SCIENCE

Following
the positivist or, as Winograd and Flores call it [1986] (2), rationalistic
tradition, not only
informatics but also
information
science looks for its subject by considering information to be
something objective in the external reality. This
viewpoint remains
basic with regard to three main paradigms in our field, namely:

All
three paradigms consider the knowing subject in interaction with
something
called information. This typification leaves aside many nuances
and combinations. It is not my intention now to criticize any specific
authors, but just to delineate some paths of thought when looking for
the
groundings of our field (3).

According
to the representation paradigm human beings are knowers or
observers
of an outside reality. The process of knowledge consists of an
assimilation
of things through their representations in the mind/brain of the
knowing
subject. These representations, once processed or codified in our
brain,
can then be communicated to other minds and/or stored and processed in
machines (computers). Human beings are biological information
processors.
Information is the codified double of reality. Humans can use
information
for specific rational purposes, but nothing speaks against the
hypothesis
that also machines can achieve this level of information processing and
use.

On
this basis information science is concerned with the study of
representation,
codification and rational use of information.

The source-channel-receiver
paradigm takes the
phenomenon of
human communication
as a metaphor to be applied to different levels of reality. When they
communicate,
human beings, or other kinds of sources and receivers, are said to
exchange
information. In order for the receiver to understand the meaning of the
message sent by the source, a common stock of signs hast to exist. But
the exchange of information can be considered only in relationship to
the
structure of the message. In this case we speak of syntactic
information.
Cybernetics couples source and receiver dynamically. Constructivism
describes
the autogeneration of organisms coupled with their own world in a
similar
way. There is no world outside to be represented, only the
world
as the organism sees or forms it for its own purposes of
survival.

Under
these premisses information science is primarily concerned with the
impact
of information on the receiver. At the same time, receivers are seekers
or users of information in order to solve their problems.

Finally,
the Platonistic paradigm takes an opposite view to the
foregoing.
Instead of starting with a knowing subject, it looks for something to
be
considered as information in itself. This is the sphere of
human
knowledge not as a biological, psychological or sociological process
but
as objectivized in non-human carriers. We can call it, paradoxically, materialistic
Platonism. The idealistic version of this paradigm considers
knowledge
as something objective in itself, independently of any material
carrier.

Information
science is supposed to study primarily the world of information
in itself, i.e., to contribute to the analysis and construction of
it. Information has the same ontological status as the laws of logic
with
regard to the psychological or biological description of the process of
thinking. There remains the problem of the relationship between this world
and the world of the knowing subject. This is a problem similar to the
one posed by the representation paradigm. In its materialistic
version,
information science studies information as far as it is materialized in
carriers outside the brain, in the form of documents or of their
electronic
surrogates. The idealistic version considers information as an
objective
but non-material entity.

All
three paradigms have a long tradition in the history of ideas, but they
were the object of further developments in modern philosophy
particularly
with regard to the difference between the knowing subject as a kind of
substance or thing separated from the objects of knowledge
(Descartes' res cogitans vs. res extensa), which,
according
to Boss [1975,
Fig. 1], led to the subjectivist-objectivist representation of human
communication,
i.e., to the idea, that objects of the outside world are
represented
in the mind or brain of a subject. Communication means, on this basis,
the exchange of information between subjects concerning their
representations
of the outside world objects. The main characteristics of this
philosophical
paradigm are to be found, in one way or another, in the three leading
paradigms
of our field. Maturana and Varela's constructivism [1980],
philosophical
hermeneutics and Wittgenstein's later philosophy criticize this kind of
dichotomic thinking. In the case of constructivist theories the outside
world becomes formally determined by the structure of the living.
Within
information science similar attempts were made, for instance, with the
development of the cognitive viewpoint. From a hermeneutic
point
of view cognitivism dislocates knowledge from social praxis.

1a/1b:
body of a and b2a/2b:
brain of a and b3a/3b:
psyche (or mind or self) of a and b4a/4b
representation of an object (information) of the outside world 5:
outside world6:
impression of (or 'in-formation' process from) the object 7:
object of the outside world8a/8b:
information exchange between a and b concerning their representations
of
the outside objects

II.
FROM THE COGNITIVE TURN TO THE PRAGMATIC TURN

The
shift
from the "physical or mechanical" paradigm of the Cranfield tests
[Ellis
1991] to the cognitive turn took place at the beginning of the
seventies
[Kunz/Rittel, 1972] and particularly with the ASK-Theory developped by
Belkin et al. [1982] as well as with Ingwersen's "cognitive viewpoint"
[1984]. Belkin's theory refers to an "anomalous state of knowledge" as
the basis of the information retrieval process. The knower is
originally
a non-knower. This is a Socratic insight as well as a hermeneutic one.
The non-knower is a partial-knower i.e., an inquirer, whose questions
are
based on a "conceptual state of knowledge" that is part of the "user's
image of the world". The affinity of these terms to some basic ideas of
hermeneutics, for example pre-understanding, is evident, and it
was very soon identified as such [Hollnagel, 1980]. Instead of starting
from an objectivist consideration of something called information
and its interaction with a sender or receiver, common to all kinds of
living
and non-living systems, the cognitive turn asks for the intrinsic
relationship
between the human knower and her/his potential knowledge. The
cognitive
turn led also to a specification of the traditional paradigms in our
field.
But this turn too rests upon the modern subject/object dichotomy, i.e.,
it overemphasizes an epistemological view of the relationship between
man
and world. Knowledge becomes, even more emphatically, a world
in
itself.

This
emphasis becomes manifest for instance in Brookes' foundation of
information
science. On the basis of Popper's ontology Brookes proposed his
"fundamental
equation of information science", where a knowledge structure is
modified
by information. Information is to be found objectively as
"extra-physical
entities which exist only in cognitive [mental or information] spaces."
[Brookes, 1980, 1981]. This is, on the hand, an idealistic version of
the
Platonistic paradigm. On the other side, Brookes considers the
interaction
between subjective and objective knowledge as being reflected in the
changes
to be observed in the knowledge structure caused by new information.
Following
Rudd [1983] we can ask: "Do we really need World III?" i.e., do we
really
need a trichotomic Popperian ontology? Hermeneutics and Wittgenstein's
late philosophy criticize some presuppositions underlying ontological
dichotomies
and trichotomies, without taking the path of monism, i.e., remaining
skeptical.
By questioning the presuppositions of a "capsule-like psyche" [Boss,
1975]
and of a re-presented outside world, hermeneutics offers a new
insight
into the question of how knowledge is being pragmatically constituted
and
socially shared by human beings, whose being is basically a
being-in-the-world-with-others.
The empirical study of this phenomenon is at the core of information
science.

These
few references to the "cognitive viewpoint in information science"
[Belkin,
1990] show a tendency in recent discussion of the foundations of our
discipline:
information is intrinsically connected to the knowledge structure of
human
beings. The cognitive viewpoint brings out a founding dimension of our
field but it remains unsatisfactory as far as the user is considered
primarily
as a knower. I would like to introduce some hermeneutic concepts in
order
to look for a possible solution of the difficulties which arise when
the
subject/object dichotomy of modern epistemology is taken for granted in
the cognitive turn.

One
of the key insights of hermeneutics is the holistic (not monistic)
approach
to the relationship betwenn man and world. This approach is a social
and
a pragmatic one. We are not isolated monads, having first a private or
subjective cognitive sphere, separated from the objective one. Language
is not something occurring in the inner sphere of a subject, whose
interactions
with an outside object lead to inner representations, to be
communicated
through signs to other receiver-minds. Wittgenstein's private language
argument has clearly refuted this thesis [Wittgenstein 1984].

Instead
of the modern presupposition of subjectivity as a "psyche-capsule"
which
was established in order to describe a theoretical or objective view on
things belonging to a real world, hermeneutics refers to the founding
dimension
of our being-in-the-world-with-others, in the sense of a
historical
dimension of disclosure of meaning, which conditions (but does not
fully
determine) our understanding of the world including our theories of
it.
Being prior to our theoretical and/other practical projects, this
dimension
is called pre-understanding. It is the open context of
possibilities
within which our inter-personal life as well as our dealing with things
and with nature reveals a possible horizon of meaning. Our
being-in-the-world
is such that we are not first within our subjectivity and look
afterwards
for ways of getting out of it, but we are basically open, i.e., able to
be addressed, within specific situations, by the meaningfulness or
meaninglessness
of things. At the same time we grasp this openness as a finite one,
given
our posterior knowledge of birth as well as our prior knowledge of
death.
Fig. 2 shows the dimension of shared and limited openness, which
characterizes
our being-in-the-world.

Fig.
2: Sketch of our being-in-the-world-with-others (Boss 1975)

1:
World-openness: open and finite context of possibilities (past, present
and future ones) in their partial and socially mediated 'dis-closure'2:
'closure' or undiscovered and never completely discoverable dimension
of
all our foundational efforts3:
'being-outside' sharing thematically with others the meaning of (for
instance:
past) things in changing contexts (=circles and crosses)4,5,6:
'being-outside' sharing present things (for instance: a tram)

Our
way of being is, according to hermeneutics, different from the one of
other
beings we know of (e.g. animals, machines). The term existence
is
an indicator of this difference, by stressing the sense of being
outside
(ek-). This being outside is originally a
being-outside-with-others.
Communication in the sense of sharing together a common world is a
specific
trait of our being-in-the-world. Here lies the existential foundation
of
information science. Information, in an existential-hermeneutic
sense,
means to thematically and situationally share a common world. If we
ask for the conditions of possibility of communicating to each other
the
possible meaning of things within specific horizons of understanding,
then
the hermeneutic answer is that we can do this because we already share
a world. Thus, information is not the end product of a representation
process,
or something being transported from one mind to the other, or, finally,
something separated from a capsule-like subjectivity, but an
existential
dimension of our being-in-the-world-with-others.

Information
is, more precisely, the articulation of a prior pragmatical
understanding
of a common shared world. This prior understanding, or pre-understanding,
remains to a great extent tacit even when we articulate it in spoken or
written form just because, given our finite being, we can never make it
fully explicit. One important consequence of this is that, in the case
of scientific thematization of the world, we can never render a full
foundation
of knowledge. Human knowledge is, as theory of science stresses, always
tentative. This tentative character means, as I argue in [1986], that
knowledge,
being basically shared knowledge necessarily refers to limited horizons
of pre-understanding as well as to a community which shares this
pre-understanding.
Hermeneutics stresses the pragmatic dimension of human existence in the
sense that we primarily live within a tacit context before we get the
undisturbed
freedom to look at things as if (!) we were not existentially
concerned.
But, indeed, "primum esse, tum philosophari" (Seneca). We were not
asked
beforehand whether we like to be or not. To be means primarily
having
to do with things, which is the original meaning of Greek prágmata.
We can use this term to denotate a fundamental characteristic of our
being-in-the-world,
i.e., a characteristic prior to the theoretic subject/object dichotomy.
This is also the meaning of Wittgenstein's "forms of life", which are
the
basis for our "language games" [1984, p. 23].

The
cognitive turn in information science presupposes this pragmatic
dimension
of our being-in-the-world, but it does not make it explicit. This
pragmatic
dimension is not a practical as opposed to a theoretical one, because
also
in our actions we are not void of all pre-understanding but already informed
i.e., sharing a common background of un-discovered potentialities for
being.

Thus,
information is neither a mentalistic nor just a mind-related concept
but
expresses a characteristic of our pragmatic way of being. It points to
the dimension of sharing with others thematically different practical
and/or
theoretical possibilities of world disclosure. When we say: 'we store,
retrieve, exchange etc. information' we act as if (!) information were
something out there'. But it is, on the contrary, we who are there,
sharing a common world and therefore able to share explicitly with
others,
in a process of partial disclosure, the conditions and limits of our
understanding.
I take the term information in this existential meaning as a basic
concept
of information science.

Scientific
knowledge is the classical field where the creation of a common
pre-understanding
is an essential aim in itself. It is not by chance that information
science,
since its very beginning, considered the processes of technological
manipulation
of scientific or, more generally speaking, professional-oriented
knowledge,
as its paradigmatic model of shared knowledge, i.e., of
information.

The
pragmatic turn´ was proposed by Roberts [1982] and Wersig et al.
[1982 and 1985] in the eighties. Roberts looks for a behaviourist
approach
to "information man". Wersig considers the "actors" within "problematic
situations". The "rational-cognitive treatment of problems" constitutes
for Wersig only one aspect of the problem of rationalization. In other
words, "information man" cannot be separated from the specific
situations
in which she/he is pragmatically and socially imbedded. More radically,
"information man" cannot be separated in her/his cognitive functions
from,
for instance, aesthetic or ethical ones. I believe that these ideas
lead
to a hermeneutic and rhetorical foundation of information science.

The
question 'what is information?' asks for substantial characteristics of
something. But information, taken as a dimension of human existence, is
nothing substantial. Instead of asking: 'what is information?' we can
ask:
'what is information (science) for?' The turn to the second question
means
a change of perspective. The pragmatic fields of open possibilities are
shared contexts, also in the linguistic sense of the word (con-texts),
i.e., of thematically shared pre-understanding. The aim of information
science is to thematize this con-textual dimension taking into
consideration
primarily all technical forms of communication as parts of other forms
of life. This scientific thematization can take place in a
formal-methodological
as well as in a cultural-historical or pragmatic perspective. I call
the
first an information heuristics or ars quaerendi' and the
second
information hermeneutics. All methods of information retrieval belong
to
the first one and are an essential part of our science. But a mere
formalist
or substantialist view leaves aside the existential groundings i.e.,
the
necessary thematization of the historical, cultural, economic etc.
dimensions
which are the pre-conditions for understanding what we mean when we
say:
'we store, retrieve, exchange etc. information'. An information economy
that seeks to reduce information to an exchange value without taking
into
account the different forms of life in which it is grounded is no less
dangerous than a blind exploitation of nature. In designing tools we
are
designing, as Winograd and Flores remark [1986, p. xi], "ways of
being".
This, I think, is a key insight with far-reaching implications for
information
science studies, which do not forget the pragmatic dimension of their
subject
matter.

Taking
into consideration the unity of boths aspects, the methodological and
the
pragmatic, information heuristics and information hermeneutics,
information
science can be considered a sub-discipline of rhetoric.

III.
INFORMATION SCIENCE AS A HERMENEUTIC-RHETORICAL DISCIPLINE

In
his Rhetoric [Rhet. 1358 b] Aristotle
distinguishes three
kinds of speech:

-
deliberative
speech (genos symbouleutikon): concerns arguments for or against
someone or something, and is related to future actions. -
juridical speech (genos dikanikon): concerns charge or defence,
and is related to past events. -
laudatory speech (genos epideiktikon): concerns praise and blame
and is mainly related to present situations.

Aristotle
connects rhetoric not only to other linguistic-methodological
disciplines
such as logic, dialectic and topic, but also with ethics and
politics.

This
classical division of rhetoric embraces, in other words [Schlüter,
1978, pp. 22-26], three objectives including their corresponding human
capabilities:

It
is easy to see that the negative forms of the informative speech, to
which
Schrader refers, cannot be considered as an essential part of
information
science as long as such a science is not seen as a sub-discipline of
rhetoric.
The crucial point underlying the hermeneutic-rhetorical paradigm of
information
science is neither the analogy of information as something physical nor
the representation of reality within an inner sphere, but the
recognition
of the interwovenness of information and misinformation as an
existential
dimension, i.e., as a specific human way of sharing with others the
world
openness. Information and misinformation are, in some way, pseudonyms,
i.e. ,they are abbreviations for experiences such as "lies, propaganda,
misrepresentation, gossip, delusion, hallucination, illusion, mistake,
concealment, distortion, embellishment, innuendo, deception" (Schrader)
on the one hand, and of telling the truth, communicating publicly our
convictions
and ideas, looking for adaequate approaches to all kinds of phenomena,
hearing to what others have to say, letting our phantasy create new
possibilities
of being, developing our sense of reality, cultivating critical
thinking,
as well as other capacities such as righteousness, openness, frankness,
clarity, helpfulness, and truthfulness, on the other.

By
grasping information and misinformation as a dimension of human
existence,
I am suggesting a distinction with regard to other uses of these terms.
This anthropologic (or ontologic) distinction does not imply an
anthropocentric
view. It criticizes a worldless subjectivity representing the things of
the outside world in an encapsulated mind. To exist means, for human
beings,
to be thrown into a field of possibilities with the capacity of
conceiving and misconceiving not only our own (technological) projects,
but also the nature of things that bring themselves forth.

One
fundamental reason for the interwovenness of information and
misinformation
is precisely the finite structure of human existence, our facticity
or thrownness (Heidegger's "Geworfenheit").
Science
remains fallible and all the information we are supposed to store,
retrieve
etc. is to be understood within a possible breakdown situation
(Winograd
and Flores 1986). According to the classical physical paradigm
these
situations should be avoided in order to get relevant results.
For
the hermeneutic-rhetorical approach they are a basis for users
constructions.

The
rhetorical distinctions do not intend to separate informative (and
deliberative)
speech from the other forms of speech nor to isolate all of them from
ethics
and politics. In order to see these connections, for instance between
informative,
persuasive and pleasant speech in our field, we have but to recall
questions
of data security and copyright, or the persuasive efforts of a host
marketing
division or, finally, the efforts to create user-friendly systems. The
ideology of a pure informative speech rests upon the disregarding of
its
rhetorical roots. Many of our so-called information systems are
remnants
of a pre-pragmatic, utopian view of an ideal language, although or,
more
precisely, because our field has been considering itself as a practical
one, i.e., as one which does not need a theory.

With
regard to the formal-methodological questions to be studied against a
rhetorical
background, we are particularly committed in our field to
considering
the technological or artificial possibilities of the informative
speech.
Aristotle distinguishes between non-artificial (atechnoi) and
artificial
(entechnoi) means of persuading (pisteis), the
first
ones being the given ones ("such as witnesses, tortures, documents"),
whereas
the second are the ones to be produced by the speaker and to be
analyzed
theoretically by rhetoric (Rhet. 1355 b). Information science, as a
sub-discipline
of rhetoric, studies the different forms of handling artificially i.e.,
technologically, shared knowledge. But such handling is, as in the case
of other forms of rhetoric, not just a formal-methodological question,
completely independent from ethical and political dimensions. Rhetoric
and topic play a basic role in the construction of hypertext databases.
For, as Wallmannsberger remarks [1990], non-linearity and associativity
imply a conception of human knowledge, where analogy and probability
are
the key aspects. Contrary to the idea of information as a
decontextualized
or situation-independent sphere, a hermeneutic and rhetorical view
stresses
the contextuality (including cultural, aesthetic, ethical, and
political
dimensions) of meaning. The pragmatic turn in philosophy, as carried
out
by hermeneutics and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations,
has decisive implications for our field. Hypertext and hypermedia as
well
as other kinds of intelligent databases and systems, can be
called intelligent as far as they take into consideration
dialectical,
topical and rhetorical figures. On the background of rhetoric it is
also
possible to thematize the connections of these technological mediations
to ethics and politics.

The
question: What is information science for? is a rhetorical question in
the sense that information science, conceived as a sub-discipline of
rhetoric,
implies a double-bind methodology. It must accomplish a self-reflection
in a formal-interpretative as well as in a cultural-historical way. It
has to resist the temptation to become just a technical heuristics or a
metadiscipline embracing ethics and politics. As a sub-discipline of
rhetoric
it belongs to other deliberative techniques. As one part of them it is
different from juridical and literary forms of speech, but it certainly
implies aspects of persuasion and pleasure. This relationship between
rhetoric
and aesthetics within information science needs to be more strongly
emphasized
than I am doing it here. It does not only imply the user-friendliness
or
the ergonomic design of information systems, i.e., the alliance between
information science and information design, as Orna and Stevens remark
[1991], but also takes into consideration, much more basically, the
bodily
or aesthetic (Greek: aisthesis = perception) dimension of human
existence. We should study how information technologies influence the
bodily
possibilities of the users. We need, in other words, an information
science
aesthetics closely related to an information science ethics i.e., to a
critical analysis of the ways in which power structures are imposed on
the (bodies of the) users or, viceversa, to become aware of the
situations
and conditions in which information technology becomes, individually
and
socially, an open field of self creation. One way of doing this is, as
Frohmann proposed [1991], through discourse analysis. Information
science
is a hermeneutic science just because there is no definite separation
between
information and misinformation. Information science is the science of
information
and misinformation.

We
are concerned, as Popper suggested [1973], with problems and not with
subject
fields precisely because problems always arise within changing
(cultural
and historical) horizons or fields (!) of expectations. These terms
belong,
by the way, to the same geographical metaphor (pro-blem = to
throw
before).

The
linear model of human knowledge and action from "facts" to "decisions",
suggested by Hayes [1991], is an idealized description of human
understanding,
which must take decisions in order to establish facts, thus being
involved
in a hermeneutic, i.e., not only intellectual, but also pragmatical
circle.

The
question 'what is information for?' leads to the question 'what is
information
science for?' since information science, conceived as a
hermeneutic-rhetorical
discipline, studies the con-textual pragmatical dimensions
within
which knwoledge is shared positively as information and negatively
as misinformation particularly through technical forms of
communication.
These are not just an instrument but a "way of being" [Winograd and
Flores
1986]. This conception of information science is important if we want
information
systems to become part of the background of various forms of
living.

NOTES

(1)
For a detailed exposition see my [1986]. (2)
For criticisms on Winograd and Flores see my [1991a] (3)
For more details see my [1986, pp. 74-98]